Every Secret Thing

Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman tells the story of two young girls whose lives change one day when they get kicked out of a birthday party and take a wrong turn down a street on their way home. Just eleven years old, Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller come across a baby in a carriage, seemingly unattended. They commit a crime that leaves them both in a detention center for the next seven years of their lives.

Ronnie Fuller is portrayed as the bad child of the duo. She seems to be the one always getting into trouble and dragging along good girl Alice Manning with her. Alice is the timid one, the one who everyone believes is easily influenced by terrible Ronnie. It is now seven years after the crime and the two girls, now eighteen, are being released from their respective detention centers. After the girls are released, more babies begin going missing from the neighborhood, always turning back up within a few hours. But when one child goes missing and is not returned, Ronnie and Alice are the first to be questioned because of their past.

We soon start to learn things about the girls and the day the baby they found in the carriage seven years prior turned up dead, leaving them responsible. While there is no shocking twist in this book that will leave you reeling, there are definitely a few twists and turns to keep it interesting.

The hardest part about this book is that not one of the characters are likable. Each person has some quality that makes it impossible to know who to root for. But that also made it more interesting for me. I didn't find myself focusing on rooting for one character, I was just focused on figuring out the story and getting into the minds of these disturbed girls. This was my first Lippman book and I look forward to reading many more from her!